More and more enterprises have dedicated applications (app or apps) for certain platforms (e.g., mobile, desktop, tablet, wearable device, television). Apps serve many functions. For example, they can provide general information, prices, booking forms, search features, user accounts, messengers, news feeds, and much more.
When using a search engine, a user may input an explicit app-related query, where the user's intent is to receive a query result including the app belonging to an explicitly-defined enterprise or an app related to a category. For example, the user may input “ABC app,” wherein “ABC” is the enterprise's name. Accordingly, if the enterprise has an app, the search engine will likely return an application result (e.g., a link to an app that the user can download) for such a query. As another example, the user may input “weather application.” Accordingly, the search engine will likely return application results that relate to the category “weather.”
In another example, the user may input an implicit category query, where the user does not explicitly specify “app.” The user may or may not be aware that there is an app available that is associated with the query. For example, the user may input “flight booking.” The search engine may return deep link resource results, which are web resources whose addresses include a path (e.g., https://example.com/path) rather than only the resource's homepage (e.g., https://example.com). Currently, deep link resources are not linked to a related app, unless the developer of the app has manually associated the app with the deep link resource. Accordingly, when an implicit app category query is performed, the results oftentimes do not include app results. As can be appreciated, it is desirable to provide automated linking of an app to a related web resource for enabling responsive and consistent delivery of apps as search results responsive to implicit category queries.